


Game of Drabbles

by vampaya



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 13:03:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11358072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vampaya/pseuds/vampaya
Summary: A series of drabbles. Spoilers ahead.





	1. Chapter 1

Ned was gone. Well and truly gone. The news struck Cat like thunder, and she felt her knees give way as she sank down to a chair. Suddenly, the air felt too thick and the press of eyes against her skin felt like blades. Staggering to her feet, Cat made her way to the wood, thinking maybe if she could get some solitude, she could breathe again and find that this would all be a bad dream. She was Catelyn Stark. Stark. Ned's wife. Ned's lover, Ned's confidante, the mother of his children. She was his and he was hers, and she felt herself spiraling out of control as the axis that had for so long rooted her in reality vanished with the simple utterance of, "He's gone, Cat." She heard a clang of metal striking something as she neared the center of the wood, and she paused.

  
Robb cried out as he struck the tree with his sword, tears falling like stones to the ground. Cat looked at her eldest son. She had to be Robb's mother; she could not be Ned's wife right now, because Ned's wife would cry and break and blow into the wind like so many flecks of dust, whereas Robb's mother would pull her baby boy to her breast and let him weep as he did as an infant and in his youth when he and Theon had been playing at sword fighting with sticks and a well placed snap of a twig had landed Robb with split knuckles and as he did now, when the weight of both his father's death and the inherited lordship all came crashing down around him. 

 

She had to be his mother right now. All Cat could see was her sweaty little boy playing in his father's armour, just like they had told him not to do thousands of times, all she can see is Ned's green eyes flashing on her son's face as he struck the tree again, again, again. 

 

"You've ruined your sword," she said haltingly, almost scolding him.

Robb turned and dropped his sword, falling into her arms, weeping. Cat remembered him at his birth, red faced and squalling in her arms much like he was now. 

 

Ned was gone, but she made herself remember. Remember his smile, his laugh, the tears in his eyes when he held Robb for the first time after his birth, the way he chased Sansa round the garden when she was still a little girl, the way he has grinned guiltily when she caught him teaching Arya how to properly hold a bow despite her wishes. 

 

But she could not be Ned's wife, Ned's widow right now.

 

She had to Robb's mother right now, because the pain of seeing her son so broken was immediate, and because being Ned's wife was too great a burden for her to bear.


	2. Then you will see exactly what life is worth when all the rest is gone.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dany lost everything.

Dany is a mother of more than dragons. Everyone forgets that she was once with child, that she had dreamt of a fair boy with dark hair bouncing on her knee, of watching him ride his first pony under his father's tutelage, of proudly braiding bells into his thick hair, of teaching him to speak high Valyrian, of wandering the desert with their khalasar and watching him grow and grow. Everyone forgets that she would spend her nights curled into Drogo's side, whispering to Rhaego in her belly.   
  
Everyone forgets that Dany lost everything all at once, and that she lost it all again as she watched Drogo's arms twitch as she smothered him, full of contempt for herself for what she had done to her husband. She had begged for his life, but what Mirri Maaz-Dur had given her was the bare minimum. Drogo breathed, but that was all. He could not smile, he could not place his giant hand on Dany's belly and talk to their son, he could not run his fingers through her silver hair, he could not say with that rumbling voice that she was the moon of his life. Nothing. Dany had nothing because she had risked everything and lost it all.

 

 


	3. How long do I have to stare?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa reflects.

Sansa was dead inside. She had to be, in order to endure Joffrey. Cersei, too. She was as dead inside as her father's head upon the pike in front of her. She stared. And stared. And stared. She did as she was told. And remembered every freckle and wrinkle and crinkle in the corner of her father's eye when he laughed. She remembered all the good things. She remembered his thick northern accent, remembered his calloused hands wrapping around her waist and hoisting her into the air as she shrieked and giggled, remembered his laughter echoing like distant thunder in the halls of Winterfell.

 

It was the only thing keeping her from choking on the hate swelling up in her throat like so much bile. Hatred for Joffrey, hatred for Cersei, hatred for Illyn Payne, and hatred for herself most of all. She had been such a child, too blinded by infatuation to see Joffrey for the monster he truly was until it was too late and she was left with nothing but the sight of her father's head, dripping blood and covered in more flies than freckles.


	4. You can try, little dove.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Shouldn't I love King Joffrey, your Grace?" 
> 
> "You can try, little dove."

Cersei knows Joffrey is a monster. It was a fact with which she had made her peace long ago. She had known since he was a toddler, when she watched him purposefully bite the back legs off of a frog and shriek with laughter as he watched the frog try to crawl away. She had known since he was five, and she had had to pry him off of Myrcella, unwrap his tiny hands off of her throat and watch with relief and fear as the colour reappeared in Myrcella's cheeks a few moments after. She had known since he was seven, and she had found a dull, bloody steak knife under his bed and the puppy they had given him on his nameday dead and partially skinned. She knows he is a monster. But she also knows that he is her son. And mothers must love their sons.


End file.
